Alfredo Morales answers a worksheet while watching a women's history video during a women's studies class at Texas Tech University Thursday, September 13, 2012. (Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Stephen Spillman)

Grant Raymond answers a worksheet while watching a women's history video during a women's studies class at Texas Tech University Thursday, September 13, 2012. (Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Stephen Spillman)

Students watch a women's history video showing an interview of Governor Ann Richards during a women's studies class at Texas Tech University Thursday, September 13, 2012. (Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Stephen Spillman)

Marjean Purinton came to Texas Tech in 1995 and was “flabbergasted” by the lack of knowledge of women’s issues and conservative positions.

The English professor and associate dean of the Honors College served as the Women’s Studies program coordinator in Western Massachusetts, and women’s studies are an important part of her academic profile.

At Tech, she teaches a course on feminist thought and theory in the Women’s Studies program.

“It’s not just students. I can kind of forgive students. They’re teachable. They’re young. They don’t know,” she said. “It’s the community at large, and to some extent colleagues and administrators. There’s real push back for progress in that way. I think that it’s a

real challenge out here for (the Women’s Studies program) to operate. Perhaps because (of that), there’s a greater necessity.

“I can’t imagine a full, comprehensive tier-one university without a women’s studies program. I don’t think that makes sense. It plays an important and vital role for the university and Lubbock in general.”

Huey is finishing her minor in women’s studies. She also is a graduate instructor and research assistant in Human Development and Family Studies.

“It’s really learning more about the social structure on a larger level and sort of analyzing history and the way that things are set up and how that leads into the power issues we have today,” Huey said.

Charlotte Dunham, director of women’s studies at Tech, said the program has been offered at the university for almost 30 years. The class attracts male and female students.

Women’s Studies has a minor, a graduate minor and a graduate certificate, she said. Courses cover areas including media images of women, work and economic issues, gender issues in the family and social problems associated with gender, she said. Students also can take a variety of cross-listed courses from programs including history, sociology, English, human development, communications studies, philosophy, political science and psychology, Dunham said.

She said more than 200 students took the program’s classes in the past year, and estimated five to eight undergraduate minors and an equal number of graduate minors are in the program.

Purinton said she has seen the Women’s Studies program ebb and flow since 1995. There was a growth spurt in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, she said, followed by a period of stasis. Enrollment and interest is picking back up recently.

Purinton believes program leadership plays a significant role in the visibility of the program and the ability to recruit students.

“Women’s studies nationally kind of ebbs and flows,” she added. “When the economy is bad and situations are difficult for anybody to get a job, women are generally disenfranchised first — women and other underrepresented populations. I think it becomes painfully clear to people who feel that there is not equity, that there is not parity in workforce, in child care, in opportunity of advancement.

“All those kind of things rear their ugly heads and make women’s studies more relevant for people.”

Women’s movement

Dunham said women’s studies scholarship provides an intellectual foundation for the women’s movement, which is thriving. The role of the program is to nurture that scholarship to educate and support the movement, she added.

Dunham believes that in order for women to have equality, the United States needs more women in Congress.

“The focus of the women’s movement is equality, and depending on which group of women you talk to, assuming the quality and different understandings of how you do that and what equality means, the work is not done,” she said. “We still, on average, women make less than men. We’re not fully represented in Congress. There are lots of things the women’s movement still finds important and works on — issues related to planned parenthood and birth control.”

Purinton said women’s control of their own bodies is an issue, including issues of health care, contraception, abortion and, in some countries, genital mutilation.

Lynne Fallwell, assistant professor of history, said there is still pay disparity between men and women in certain fields.

“I think while women have made numerous strides entering different professions, there’s still a number of areas in which both women and men can’t really participate fully, and that is something I know the Women’s Studies program is interested in making sure opportunities are available for women and men in a diverse range of professions and hobbies,” she said.

Benefits

Purinton said the women’s studies classes provide a safe place for students to explore issues and test out ideas and theories, so they can come to a place of understanding.

Classes also give the students more confidence and comfort in their beliefs.

“(College) is an important period of self-discovery of their own biases and prejudices,” she said. “Some are grappling with issues of sexuality, sexual orientation. Some are becoming aware of class bias, racial bias. That’s what undergraduate education should be about.”

Huey, who has taught an undergraduate gender development course for about a year, said the professors and staff members within the Women’s Studies program are all strong, motivating women who serve as mentors.

She believes the program brings a sense of empowerment to herself and her peers.

“The (program) helps to foster the sense of empowerment and recognizing who I am as a woman and those strengths that I have and what I have to offer,” Huey said. “These larger messages we sometimes get about women and what we’re worth, that usually relates to something about body image, ability to be a mother, that doesn’t fit every woman. (Women’s studies makes) room for letting women be who they want to be without forcing them into specific roles brings a huge source of empowerment, which I find to be very motivating.”

Fallwell said she has seen this in her own students.

“For students — undergraduates and graduates — seeing female mentors in professions that they’re interested in going into and having the support of male professors that encourage these women in pursuit of occupations is really empowering in telling them simply they can do it,” she said.

To comment on this story:

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Texas Tech Women’s Studies program

■ What: The Women’s Studies Program is an interdisciplinary academic program that examines the cultural and social construction of gender; explores the history, experiences and contributions of women to society; and studies the influences of gender on the lives of women and men.

■ How: The program emphasizes critical thinking across disciplines vital to success during and following formal education.

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The G.O.P. ran on jobs and the economy in 2010 sweeping state and local elections. And that is where it ended. The first bills out of the republican held legislatures were all about abortion and had nothing to do with the economy and jobs.

Republican congressmen almost shut down the government over funding for planned parenthood. What the hell does that have to do with jobs?

Women have seen the trend toward misogynist legislation and consequently are more interested in womens' studies and how government will affect their right to choose.

Mitt Romney and far right conservatives are losing the womens vote in double digits and their stand on reproductive rights is why.